


Dancing Backward In Heels

by cerie



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Bodyswap, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-18
Updated: 2011-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:36:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thanks to Callie for the original plot bunny and kuwdora@lj for beta and general handholding. When Tesla leaves one of his projects laying around and Will accidentally touches it, he learns the hard way what it's like to be Helen Magnus for a week.  Bodyswap fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancing Backward In Heels

“I’m afraid we’re stuck.”

It was weird to hear his voice with the softer consonants of Magnus’s native accent and Will figured it would probably be even weirder to hear her voice with his accent. He hadn’t gotten to speaking yet, not when he was looking down to find his wrinkled hoodie and jeans replaced by a gauzy blouse and a pencil skirt. And the heels. He was scared to walk in the heels and he was about two and a half seconds from asking Magnus if she owned any flats. Why in the hell did women wear these things? To make their asses look good?

Magnus did have a nice ass. An excessively nice ass. A nice ass he was not thinking about when he was going to have to sit on it for the foreseeable future.

“You are…afraid we’re stuck? Can’t Tesla just switch us back?”

Magnus shook her head and ran her hands (his hands, he guessed) over a few schematics laid across the table. It seemed Tesla had only half finished the design for his body switcher and had put it to the side after that, using it as just a momentary distraction from his overarching goal to revive the vampire race. Will really wished he’d had a little less ADD when it came to finishing things. Or kept the dangerous stuff well out of the reach of an unsuspecting passerby with a tiny bit of a tactile fascination.

“Afraid not. I’ll have to track him down and see if we can finish it. Until then, I guess we’re going to have to get used to…our new bodies. Borrowed bodies. Anything embarrassing that you think I should know about?”

Will laughed, a strangled little noise he’d never actually heard out of Magnus before now. Embarrassing? What about the fact that sometimes the right pair of heels made him go for the baggy jeans or how sometimes he came in a little late to the morning meeting because he’d caught Magnus sneaking down for her four AM cup of tea in nothing but a silk robe and bare feet? Nope. Nothing embarrassing at all. Will really hoped that his body’s involuntary responses hadn’t stayed behind when his brain switched accommodations.

“I suggest you work on accents. You’ll be doing quite a few teleconferences for the near future.” Will didn’t suppress his groan and tried to figure out how they were going to fool the rest of the Sanctuaries for however long it took to get Tesla back here and to fix things. He’d always liked doing accents, it was true, but the way Magnus wrinkled her nose meant he wasn’t very good at hers. No time like the present to learn though and Magnus patted his shoulder lightly. Her shoulder. Gender pronouns were getting really confusing at this point.

~~~

The first hurdle was the shower. Magnus had thought it was best they stay in the rooms their bodies had kept prior to the switch (just in case they switched back unexpectedly) so after a few long hours of explaining things to Kate and Henry and sending them on a field mission to extricate Tesla from his latest escapade and drag him back to the Sanctuary, it was well after midnight and Will had collapsed on a bed with sheets that cost more than the GDP of some small countries. He kind of wished he’d taken the time to enjoy them but he’d take a few hours of quiet, blissful sleep instead.

When the first alarm clock went off at 5:30, Will turned it off. When it blared again at 5:45, inexplicably from the other side of the room, Will staggered to his feet and promptly tripped over the heels he didn’t realize he was still wearing. Damn. That alarm clock got ripped from the wall and he hoped like hell that Magnus didn’t mind minor property damage. Her room was a hazard, full of gauzy bed curtains and old-fashioned furniture; Will much preferred the sparse, modern lines of his own room. Granted, it was just an IKEA special and a couple plants Magnus had thrown in there to make it seem less like a model house, but it was his. He knew where everything was. He wasn’t going to get choked by bed curtains.

He stripped in the dark, disturbed by all the soft curves under her clothes. His clothes. Gender pronouns, still confusing. Still too much brain power for this early in the morning. The shower was one of those with multiple heads and benches inside and Will goggled at it for a few minutes before he actually stepped in and the sound he let out, Jesus. He wanted to hear Magnus making that sound again, that was for sure. He didn’t see any soap, at least not soap as he knew it in flat little bars that he used until they practically sublimated in his hand. He had always been a little on the cheap side and even though Magnus paid him well, old habits died hard. Will had a nice little nest egg built up ever since he’d been working for the Sanctuary, that was for sure. He used some really strong-smelling liquid that bubbled up and Will wasn’t sure if it was shampoo or soap, so he used it for everything. He hoped it wasn’t going to make his hair fall out.

He pressed his forehead against the wall and let the water wash over him, long strands of hair sticking to his cheeks and neck. He’d always thought Magnus had gorgeous hair and had a minor panic attack at the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to recreate the artful, tousled, gentle curl thing that she did every day and he loved so much. He figured as long as it was clean and dry she wouldn’t much care but he cared. It wasn’t her fault they’d had to switch and as weird as it seemed, he didn’t want her thinking he wasn’t going to take care of her body while he was in it. Will had always been a polite houseguest. Is that the term you used when you temporarily switched bodies with your boss? Before he could get a headache thinking about it, Will shut off the water and stepped into a soft, fluffy towel.

Clothes were another panic attack. Will was used to taking bras off, not putting them on. He went with black and grabbed blindly at the panties in her lingerie drawer, coming up with something that would cover his ass after four attempts. He slid them on and wandered to her closet, about the size of his own bedroom, and pulled out slacks and a button down. Those were close enough to his own clothes, even if the buttons were on the wrong side, and a little more rooting around turned up a pair of what Will guessed were ballet flats. Magnus never wore them, clearly, as they didn’t show any wear and were still nestled in a shoebox.

That adventure over, he made his way downstairs with hair still damp and curling over his shoulders as he wandered around the kitchen in search of a coffee mug and coffee. He was surprised to find it made already and a little shocked when he heard his own voice from across the room, amused and falling in a cadence that was distinctly Magnus. Jesus. That would never sound normal, not in a million years. Will really needed them to switch back. Yesterday.

It was weird looking on his own body from the outside and judging from the looks of it, Magnus hadn’t had nearly the trouble he’d had getting ready. His face was freshly shaved and there was just enough product in his hair to make it look tame, not overdone. The shirt was ironed, the jeans had creases…did she wander around and get a damn iron before she had her tea? She was taking better care of his body than he usually did. Will shook his head a little and went back to the coffee and grabbed a donut to go with, earning a disapproving noise from Magnus.

“What? You know I drink coffee. It’s not like the darjeeling du jour doesn’t have caffeine in it.”

She gestured toward the donut and pursed her lips, a weird expression on the face of Will Zimmerman. Will rolled his eyes and sighed, laying the donut down on the kitchen countertop and giving her a challenging look. After trying to get ready without breaking his neck or accidentally feeling up his boss, he figured he was entitled to eat whatever the hell he wanted for breakfast. Whatever. The. Hell. He. Wanted.

“I trust you’ll be doing a 5K after you eat that overprocessed, carbohydrate laden breakfast food? While your metabolism can handle such poison, mine cannot. You don’t get to 160 and look like I do without a little maintenance, Will.”

Will sighed and walked away from the donut, snagging a bowl from the cabinet and pouring Magnus’s usual granola into it before dousing it liberally with whole milk. That got an eyebrow, but no dissension, and Will shoved his spoon in and started to eat. Magnus crossed the room and took the donut he’d been intending, considered it for a moment, and polished it off like a starving man at a buffet table. How long had it been since she’d eaten crap like that? He’d never seen Magnus so into something before in his life.

“So, any progress? Figure you’ve been up for a while.”

Milk dribbled down his chin and Magnus arched her brow again. It was still a weird expression on his face but Will figured he’d better get used to it for the time being. Not like they were switching back any time soon. Will swiped at his chin with a napkin and motioned for her to go on; he wasn’t really in the mood for her to draw it out when he was still only a quarter of the way through a cup of coffee and she’d eaten his breakfast.

“Yes and no. I fiddled with it a bit before I came down here but I can’t seem to make heads or tails of it. I am afraid it is purely Nikola’s madness and we’re just along for the ride.”

Great. They were at the mercy of Tesla who might not even be able to fix him when and if he decided to show up. At least Kate and Henry were on the offensive there and they weren’t going to have to wait on him to come begging a favor at Magnus’s doorstep. While that happened from time to time, the months between were not something he was looking forward to living out in Magnus’s body. He’d run out of flats pretty soon and everyone would know something was up when Magnus wore the same shoes twice. He downed some coffee before he tackled that, figuring if he couldn’t have a drink at seven in the morning he would take what he could get.

“Oooohhkay. So I am just gonna hang out in your body until Tesla shows up to fix us? Magnus, you know I’m never going to pull off being you, right?”

There was no way. Maybe to someone who only knew Magnus on paper he could pull it off but every person had their own individual set of tells, little quirks that distinguished them from the next person. Even identical twins could have their own mannerisms and ways of phrasing things and it was a litany of small things that made up Helen Magnus that he would never be able to capture in a few weeks of being in her shoes. If he was going to be Magnus, he needed to do it right, and Will didn’t think he had the skillset necessary to pull that off.

He thought she might do a little better if only because Will didn’t have friends that tended to stick around for centuries at a time. There wasn’t anyone in his life outside of Magnus, Henry, Kate and the Big Guy who knew him well enough to know what he was like on a daily basis and in direct contrast to his psychiatric philosophy of openness, Will wasn’t really an open person. He had his secrets but he played them close to the chest, wanting to be a blank slate for his patients to bounce off.

“I imagine we’ll have to come out with it eventually. For now, let’s try our best at being each other. We can play Cyrano as each requires it?”

Will wasn’t really sure that was going to fly.

~~~  
His first major crisis came a few days later in the form of a very angry Norwegian businessman spouting off at him in what he guessed was, well, Norwegian and getting even more angry when Magnus apparently forgot how to speak a language she was fluent in. He was so taking that “World’s Best Boss” mug back to the store and getting his money back in exchange for a couple strong drinks down at the dive bar on Seventh he liked to go to every once in a while. Yup. He was taking that ten bucks and trading it in for two pints of Guinness, for sure.

He shut Magnus’s laptop and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the rhythmic shuffle of feet crossing her office and quieting, he guessed, about three feet behind them. He wasn’t opening his eyes to find out, that was for sure. Nope. Now he understood why Magnus switched from Earl Grey to Tension Tamer about halfway through any given day. Doing her job was tedious and it felt sort of like trying to juggle five flaming batons with one hand tied behind his back. There was no way he could keep this up for any longer. No way at all.

The first touch of warm hands against his shoulders made him jump a little; today was not the day to have tried out that low necked top, nope. Not when his own hands commanded by someone else decided to give him a neck massage. That was never, ever going to be anything but weird but as long fingers worked out the tension, Will tipped his head back and let out a little satisfied moan. Jesus. She sounded amazing like that. Had Magnus ever made that sound before he took up residence? Will didn’t think so.

Magnus worked her hands lower, fingertips slipping beneath the front of the scoop-neck of his shirt and her lips very close to his ear. If it wasn’t so damn weird, Will would be turned on and it surprised him to find that while he was aroused, it was closer to the familiar than he would have thought. Nipples tightening? Check. That was a reaction he normally had. Pulse rapid, breathing quick? Check and check. New was the tingling between his thighs and the slickness he could feel in spite of two layers of clothing and the lack of an erection, well. Yeah. It was sort of there, in some weird psychological way and Will never thought he’d be experiencing phantom limb syndrome, much less with that particular appendage.

Oh shit.

“What…what do you do when the tension gets like this? Ten minutes in the ring and I was already down for the count. I’ve seen you negotiate this crap for hours, Magnus. Hours. There’s no way I’m going to be able to keep this up for very long before I snap.”

Magnus chuckled a little, which sounded more or less the same as when Will had done it way back when he still lived at home and bent a little closer, her breath ruffling the soft hair just above Will’s ear. It felt like the safer version of how she’d pressed her cheek to his and whispered when they were on the sub and Will squirmed, the motion causing his panties to slip and slide in an extremely satisfying way. He was so fucked, at this point. So very fucked.

“There’s a bottle of single malt scotch in my bottom right desk drawer. There’s a vibrator in the bottom left. Take your pick.”

It was a little left of center for Magnus to say that and Will had to wonder if she was high. She wasn’t drunk, he would have smelled it on her breath, but her inhibitions were definitely lowered. He guessed the only way to call her bluff would be to go for the bottom left drawer but that seemed a little…exposed. Will was the first person to advocate loving yourself, it was a very psychiatric piece of rhetoric, but there was no way he was going to masturbate in Magnus’s body, much less with her standing right in front of him. Her. Whoever he was right now.

“I’ve had my share of stressors too, Will. I’m not used to waking up every morning with a raging erection, taking an impossibly cold shower to stave it off only for it to pop right back up again when I see you bending over in my robe to pull a tray of buns out of the oven. Buns which, mind you, you have no business eating while you’re borrowing my body. I’ll allow you a little exploration if it means I can do something about my…own problems.”

It would be nice to get off. It’d been three days of hell, so far, and Kate and Henry hadn’t turned up anything as far as Tesla’s whereabouts. Magnus hadn’t wanted anyone to get wind that she was compromised to avoid the inevitable removing her as head of house thing and Will had agreed; better to keep it a secret if they could. Still, there were more than a couple problems with her suggestion about their little problem. Namely, Will didn’t have a single homosexual tendency in his body.

He was very firmly a zero on the Kinsey scale no matter how far outside the Bell curve that put him and he was happy with his status as a statistical outlier. He got absolutely no pleasure from looking over Magnus in his body, both as a combination of the weird sensation of it being him to the fact that it was a male body. Magnus, on the other hand, seemed not to have any qualms with having sex with herself which made Will wonder more than a few things about his seemingly straight-laced boss. Yeah. Still, the arousal he was feeling right now was building up to an extent that Will figured he had to do something about it before he exploded. Maybe if he set some ground rules?

“Uh, maybe if we don’t touch each other it’s okay.”

Magnus laughed, a weird sound coming from his own vocal chords, and knelt down to tug open her bottom left desk drawer. Well then. Apparently she kept things well stocked because along with the aforementioned vibrator there was lube and little wipes to clean everything up afterward. God. These were things he never needed or wanted to know about his boss. How was he ever going to look at her with a straight face after this? She laid the articles on the desk and motioned toward the couch she kept in her office.

“Go on, lay down. I’m telling you, you’ll like it a little better if you let me do something to help you.”

Will shook his head, the sensation of long, soft curls against his cheeks a little more familiar than it had been three days prior. He kicked off his shoes and tugged at his clothes, pulling off a couple buttons and earning another one of those disapproving eyebrows from Magnus. If she wasn’t careful, his face was going to stick that way and she was footing the bill for the plastic surgery, not him.

“Spread your legs,” Magnus said crisply and Will shivered a little, both from the chill of the room and that tone. It was inexplicably and undeniably Magnus, in spite of the fact that the pitch was way lower, and Will slid his thighs apart and leaned back against the couch. Magnus grinned at him, Will’s own grin, and he closed his eyes before he could freak himself out again. Jesus. If he lived through this, he was going to need some serious therapy to work out all these conflicting feelings.

“I’ll keep the setting low,” Magnus promised, flicking on the vibrator and dragging the tip of it in a lazy circle around his clitoris (her clitoris? Just clitoris? Again, the gender pronouns were thwarting him.) It felt good. Will knew his own body, knew just how to twist his wrist at the end of a stroke or the way to run his palms over his thighs. He knew a woman’s body, knew how to play her so she panted and moaned and came back for more after the first time. He never knew it felt like this, the way his body seemed to flush and tighten with every sweep of the vibrator, the way the arousal was less mechanical and more fluid, the way he couldn’t stand when the vibrator laid directly on his clitoris but when it was just to the left oh fuck Magnus knew what she was doing.

“More, I trust?”

She was damned smug and Will twisted and arched his hips up, the orgasm just outside of his reach. Were women always this frustrated? God, no wonder they always made such great noises. Orgasms (usually) were just the end of a few minutes of work for Will and it wasn’t really hard and didn’t really require any kind of mindset. Not that he was this type of guy, but it wouldn’t be that hard to rub one out under the desk while on a teleconference with Declan. Or Magnus. With Magnus it would probably be better. God, why couldn’t he come?

“Magnus, can’t…almost there. Can’t get there.”

She chuckled a little and took the vibrator away, earning a pathetic little whimper from between his lips and another little chuckle from her. Will cracked one eye open just in time to see Magnus kneeling between his legs, lips dangerously close to his clitoris while two fingers slid up and down without going inside. Okay. Maybe he could handle this. The idea of penetration was still a little off-putting but he was so close and Magnus knew what she was doing.

Magnus sealed her mouth over him and slid her fingers inside, crooking them and pressing against…oh God what was that place? What the fuck…Will was coming, long and hard, muscles squeezing around Magnus’s fingers and hips tilting up and everything seemed like too much and not enough all at once. He was aware of the stubble against his thighs from Magnus’s cheeks and the way her lips and tongue sucked delicately at his clitoris and the way her fingers were crooked and rubbing against that spot. He was remembering that spot. He had to remember that spot.

He whimpered and moaned and twisted a little more, the orgasm long and drawn out and a hell of a lot better than the flash and bang of the orgasms he’d had in his own body. If this was what it felt like for women then why in the hell weren’t they masturbating 24/7? Will was never going to get anything done now, not with knowing he could feel like this at any given moment. He came down slowly, cataloguing each and every reaction from his thready pulse to the flush of his skin and the tightness in his thighs and ass. Oh God. Yes.

He blinked his eyes open slowly, meeting hers with a little disbelief. Magnus was smirking a little and she stood, putting her fingers in her mouth and drawing them out slowly, releasing them with an audible pop. A quick glance down proved that it had turned her on, the erection pressing at her jeans something that Will was all too familiar with. Magnus usually had that effect on him even when she wasn’t spread out naked and on display. Maybe his involuntary reactions had stayed behind after all.

“Condoms? You got any laying around?”

He was still a little freaked out about having sex with his own body but he felt so good after the orgasm and still wanted more. It was enough to make him forget about the inherent weirdness of the situation and go with it. It wasn’t like Magnus was going to go and tell anyone about this, after all, and Will did want to know what it would feel like. The two fingers, while pleasant, weren’t really enough and he never thought he’d ache like this to be filled. He’d never even considered it, not in the fifteen years or so he’d been having sex.

“I’m over a hundred, Will. It’s not like I still ovulate. I’ve done all your medical tests so it’s not like you don’t have anything I don’t already know about. You’re an acceptable risk.”

Will nodded and Magnus started stripping efficiently, tossing her clothes over the back of the couch before sitting down at the end, erection proudly on display. She was smart, wanting him on top, and Will approached carefully, running his fingers over her cock. It wasn’t much different than how he’d done it back in his own body except the part where he didn’t get the corresponding sensation and Magnus laughed a little and arched her hips into the touch.

“It won’t hurt. Slide on slow and let me guide you. I think you’ll like it, anyway. Hope so.”

Her sentences were short and clipped and not a way he’d ever heard Magnus before. She had to be close, from the sound of it, and Will sank down onto her slowly, the head of her cock nudging that damn spot again. He just came. He just came. How in the hell was he already halfway to orgasm again? Will pushed that thought aside and focused on moving, focused on the intense and unusual sensation of being penetrated and laughed a little when Magnus let out a strangled groan. Will knew that sound. She was damn close.

Magnus brushed her thumb against his clitoris again and he hit that spot with her cock and Will was coming again, squeezing around her and drawing out Magnus’s own orgasm as she arched once, twice, three times before she dug her hands into his hips and bit down on his shoulder. Will collapsed against her and nuzzled at her neck, kissing lightly. They hadn’t kissed, not even once, and while Will could have meaningless sex he didn’t really think of it that way with Magnus. Sure, they’d been in a bind and wanted to get off, but he cared about her. A lot. And Magnus deserved to be kissed.

He cupped her face in his hands and, in spite of the fact it was weird to be this close to his own face, Will tilted his head and met her lips with his. It was the same with eyes closed, his mouth soft and pliant against hers, and Magnus slid her tongue against his in a way that approached familiar. It seemed she’d wanted the kiss too and somehow, in spite of the fact that they’d just fucked, this was a little more intimate. This felt a little more dangerous by far, like a line was getting crossed. Will didn’t particularly mind that.

~~~

The next few days were blessedly quiet and by the end of the week, Kate and Henry turned up with Tesla in tow. He was in handcuffs, which was probably good, and they deposited him in the lab to work while Will and Magnus waited anxiously. Will had gotten used to how to imitate Magnus’s cadence and the way she walked but it wasn’t something he wanted to do for the rest of his life. They hadn’t had sex since Kate and Henry returned, both of them deeming it a little too weird, and Will sort of itched for that again. It felt good when so much about this situation was wrong or off.

He was in the lab for testing when Tesla brushed his hand over Will’s shoulder, long fingers dipping beneath the collar of his shirt. The pads of his fingers were rough, probably from years of fooling around with electricity, and Will shuddered a little. Shit. Did that arouse him? It was one thing with Magnus, who he had feelings for back in their own bodies, but it was something completely different with Tesla, whom he didn’t even like most days.

“Come now, junior. Surely you’ve experimented a little while you’ve had such luxurious accommodations? Personally, I’d have locked myself in her bedroom with a bottle of premier cru and not come out for the foreseeable future.”

Will rolled his eyes and let out a choked little moan when Tesla’s long fingers started massaging his shoulders and, after a few blissful moments of that, slid down under his shirt and bra to tug lightly at his nipples. He didn’t have electricity anymore, it was true, but Will was pretty sure he felt a spark of something. This was wrong. This was completely wrong and Will was going to pull away any second now, really.

“Ah ha. I’ve got it,” Tesla said quickly, rolling one nipple between thumb and forefinger as he clicked through a few screens on the computer with the other. Will was still half in shock and while he ought to pull away, he couldn’t. Not when it felt this good. God. Magnus was going to kill him for letting this happen while he was in her body. Kill him and not leave anything identifiable behind.

“I should certainly hope so.”

Will had never heard his voice in clipped, prim tones like that before and he scrambled away from Tesla. A quick glance showed that Magnus was pissed and Tesla was annoyed and Will was just frustrated. At least it looked like he was getting off light; Magnus had turned her gaze on Tesla full force and seemed to be ignoring Will for the time being. Good. Keep it that way.

“It looks like the capacitor blew out when you and junior here decided to play around with my work and I’ve re-routed it. I’ve actually made it more efficient, so it won’t go out after one use next time. It’s a pity, all that energy expended for just one, measly show. I guess the protégé would know all about that, wouldn’t he?”

Both Will and Magnus rolled their eyes and laid their hands against the device, pressing buttons as Tesla instructed. There was a weird pull low in his belly and then Will felt heavy. At some point, he must have closed his eyes because when he opened them, it looked like he was back in his own body. Damn. It felt good to be himself again and he grinned wide at Magnus. Tesla went to pocket the switch device, only to be stopped by Magnus popping his hand lightly.

“I’ll be taking that, thank you.”

She winked at Will then, and he grinned to himself. Maybe someday, years from now, he’d let her use that thing on him again. That one spot was too good to pass up.


End file.
